Abolition: Anatomy of a Radical Social Movement

ABSTRACT: This article centers slave resistance in the history of abolition and argues that abolition was a radical transnational social movement that transformed the United States. It illustrates how abolition gave birth to and linked the slaves’ cause with overlapping international movements such as feminism, utopian socialism, pacifism, and critiques of early capitalism and European imperialism. The abolition movement also moved the pendulum of national antislavery politics and helped create a new political coalition in the Northern states that would eventually overthrow slavery. It ultimately linked abolition to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.